


I'll Bury You in Glass (And Grow You from Concrete)

by avidvampirehunter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dark fic, F/M, Rated M for Mysteries and Lies and Kissy Kissy Muah Muah, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26351938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avidvampirehunter/pseuds/avidvampirehunter
Summary: Trapped in a cell together without their memories, Ben Solo and Rey must survive the harsh climate of a solitary, futuristic prison until their mysterious sentences are up. (Inspired by the award-winning Spanish horror film,el Hoyo)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	I'll Bury You in Glass (And Grow You from Concrete)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sidsaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidsaid/gifts).



> This fic was taking too long to finish, so posting it one piece at a time will have to do. Thank you, Sai, for your friendship and patience, and happy birthday!

She was allowed to keep one memory.

Bright, warm on her skin, the feeling of the wind, stirring the weeds grown tall between pavement squares. The blare of bugs, louder, louder, and something hard beneath where she sat, a heavy world and voices leaking from the house behind her.

She shrinks back against the wall of the dimly-lit cell, clutching her blanket tighter around her cold shoulders, and wonders why _she_ chose _it_ . Why the man across from her won’t stop staring, and won’t speak, and why _they_ chose _him_.

* * *

You can keep one memory in the Cell, and one possession. Along with a name.

She knows her name is Rey, just like she knows that the walls are washed grey, that the dim light from below is a shade of blue, that the object she chose but cannot recall choosing is some type of staff—a weapon. 

_He_ did not choose a weapon. From what she can see, he has brought nothing. 

There are two beds in the cell. One blanket each. An ethereal light shining from the creases of solid concrete walls. But, bizarrely, an empty hole in the center—a box shaped twelve feet long and three wide and perhaps up to her knees in depth—separating her, though not completely, from the man. 

_Cellmate,_ her mind supplies.

“Where are we?” she croaks at last, finding the will to speak. Her voice is hoarse and raw. She wonders why.

His stare does not flicker, his dark eyes piercing through the darkness as he lifts a pointed finger to the wall behind her.

A cold spindle trickles through her bones, and she hesitates to look away from the man, before at last looking to the wall behind her, where a number, a “50”, lies painted in uniform letters.

His voice is soft when he speaks, not hoarse, but deep and careful. “The middle.”

Her hold on the staff tightens as she draws her legs closer to her body, holding firm to the blanket. She swallows dryly. Her stomach roils. _Hungry._

The man leans his head back against the wall, long legs, planted on the ground beside his cot, firm and clothed in loose black trousers. She realizes his feet are bare, and so are hers, when he speaks again. “Just wait. You’ll eat today.”

The certainty of his words reel her. Either his memories are still with him, or they had not been placed here at the same time. Irregardless of this, he seems to have answers to the questions multiplying in her mind, so she reorients herself, resolving to try him—but only if he is right. 

In the meantime, she slips off her cot and onto the cold floor, taking the blanket with her as she steps closer to the large hole in the ground. She hears faint sounds as she does, like whispers, snoring, echoing up, as the hole continues down, eternally down, level after level into nothingness. 

It's the same when she looks up, levels and levels above, as if to silently prove the man's first claim, that where they are is in the middle of some massive structure. No doors. Only walls, light, and the hole.

It feels… _wrong._

"What is this place?" she murmurs, gazing up, neck stiff and eyes transfixed.

His frown digs into his neck. "I'd back away if I were you."

As he speaks, a loud bang echoes from below. She only has a moment to react before a large slab flies up the levels at an impossible speed, narrowly missing her nose as she takes a step away from the opening in the floor. Wind catches her hair and snatches the blanket, fluttering the fabric to his feet.

Rey swallows, cold and resisting a strong urge to shiver. "And that thing?"

The man considers her, leaning forward and prying her blanket from the floor. He rises like a tall shadow, the dim light playing off his pale face and sharp nose, dark hair limp as he walks along the edge of the hole, gaze intent on her. 

Silence grows thick between them as he stands before her, her hackles priming as she realizes her staff is out of reach. She need not wonder why he may not have brought a weapon—his stature and size seem indicative of a man who can handle himself without one—all thoughts that make her feel vulnerable.

His dark eyes search hers, not gentle, but close, and he offers the blanket to her. "Ten hours. Then you eat." He frowns. "Maybe."

She accepts her blanket, waiting to inhale until he turns his back on her, steadily returning to his side of the room. "Hey."

He pauses. 

His eyes, wide and doleful with curiosity, take her off balance. She wonders if she knows him, or if they have come to this place together. But in her uncertainty and growing panic, she asks, "What's your name?"

The man blinks, and she can almost smell his thoughts smoking, turning over themselves as he returns to his seat, leaning back into his spot against the wall. The knuckle in his throat bobs as he speaks. "Ben Solo."

 _Ben? Ben._ She could remember that. "I'm Rey."

His brow raises, a deft motion, a silent question. "That's it?"

"I think so." She searches him, too energized to sit. He hands fall to her sides. She tries not to think too much about what she's saying. He seems trustworthy enough. Not like she has much to lose in a place like this. "I don't even know how I got here."

He, _Ben,_ exhales from his nose, settling his head against the wall, as if it will give him comfort. "You must have traded for a lighter sentence."

 _Sentence?_ "So I'm in prison?" She scoffs. "But I... I'm a good person!"

The ghost of a smile haunts his lip. "I'm sure you are."

Rey scolds herself. She can’t remember anything about her life before waking up here, only… green, little stalks of green, a family arguing. Not enough to build an entire life, much less justify any actions inside of it.

How could she truly know what kind of person she was without her memories?

Her silence must speak for her, since next thing she knows Ben is leaning forward, his fingers threading together. "The Hole is a place for desperate people. If you can survive here for ten cycles, your sentence is null."

"Survive," Rey murmurs, glancing at the hole in the ceiling. Aside from the large slab of concrete that nearly killed her just moments ago, there don’t seem to be any impending threats. "That can't be too difficult."

"If you say so." Wearily, Ben ducks his head, threading a fitful hand through his hair.

Rey spots large ears under that mop before she returns to herself, and her cot. "How long have _you_ been here?"

"In the middle?"

She nods.

"Six days. It will change again tomorrow." His frown ebbs. "If I were you, I'd eat your fill. It may be all you have until the next one."

He doesn’t have to tell her twice. The pit in her stomach steadily grows wider as the seconds span past hours, silence surrounding them as conversation dies, Rey not daring to leave her bed and her staff a second time. 

She studies him until his breaths become soft, rasping, even little drags, and when she knows he has fallen asleep, allows herself to turn onto her back, looking up at the hole in the ceiling.

* * *

How strange this place was—yet, she felt an eerie calmness about it. And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she only felt it because she had nothing else to compare it to. Maybe that’s what they wanted—whoever put her here. Only one thing, one memory, of voices without faces. She didn’t even know her own until she caught it in the reflection of a silver cochlear ten hours later, as Ben had predicted. It was nothing like his, sharp with soft edges. Hers was all soft with sharp edges.

Now, she had two faces to remember. Hers and his.

Maybe that is what they wanted, too.

* * *

The large block lowers itself without any wires or chords. Like a smooth, confident deity, descending from the upper levels to settle before them.

Ben has counted how long they are allowed this visitation before. Exactly one hundred seconds to eat. No limit but your own ability.

When the banquet descends Rey is half expecting single meals to manifest for him and her alone, but her initial thought is grossly mistaken. Her face falls at the sight of a tarnished spread—plates licked clean and whole platters left with garnish.

Ben roots through the mess and pulls away the first thing he can grab, and she does the same. Whatever it is is green and has no odor, so she stuffs it in her mouth. It’s bitter flavor and cold center make her gag, but she swallows it down, staring at the rest of it left on the table.

 _Vegmeat,_ her thoughts whisper. She has eaten this before. As she looks around the table, her mind steadily recognizes more and more. _Vegmeat. Polystarch. Jogan fruit_ —which Ben makes quick work of, not even bothering to wipe the juice from his fingers.

The gentle influx of recognition pauses her appetite as she slowly, too slowly, picks at the polystarch, eating in small bites she tears off from the greater mound. It’s as she is taking her time that the stage begins to descend. In a panic, she grabs for more food, anything she can keep, and piles it onto the floor. Surely she could keep this for when she is hungry later—

“Finish it.”

Rey looks up. Ben stands there, on the other side of the now vacant hole, fuming.

“Why?” she asks, bristling. _He’s planning to take it._

Ben points a meaty finger at her meager stash. “Your food. If they catch one of us hoarding, then both of us die. So _finish it.”_

“How do you know?” Her belligerent challenge is quiet and without much bite, given her fingers already working to finish her polystarch loaf. 

The blister in Ben’s eyes doesn’t soften. “How do you think you became my cellmate?”

A cold wave breaks in Rey’s chest, one that spurs her to shove as much food in her face as she can. Ben watches, the room feeling hotter and hotter—she did not know that their surveyors had indeed caught her transgression, and were raising the temperature until she finished, but Ben did—her stomach sick as it bulged, obviously unused to eating even this much.

The sweat and the heat coil together in her, and her stomach flops. She feels poisoned, putrid, and suddenly dizzy, and lays down on the concrete hoping for cool relief, finding none. Bile rises in her throat and she chokes it down, coughing, a wretched, regretful thing, while Ben wipes his face, saying nothing.

Thankfully, the wave of great heat passes, and the two are left in temperance again.

“He ate stolen food while I slept,” Ben supplies quietly as Rey returns to herself. “Be grateful that they didn’t send the cold this time.”

Rey sighs, returning to her cot. Sweat chafes under her arms and beneath her breasts, sticky and annoying. “I’m sorry. Truly. I had no idea that was a rule. Besides, even if I had been told before, I can’t remember. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

Seeming to lose the majority of his simmering anger, Ben also flocks further to his side of the room, still slightly pacing with lingering restlessness and clenching fingers. “Plenty of prisoners have their memories erased if their crime was damning enough.”

“Damning,” Rey echoes, taking in his knowledge. She leans forward. “You sure seem to know a lot about how this system works. Why didn’t you erase _your_ memories?”

He considers her, seemingly surprised by her genuine curiosity. “I can live with my guilt.”

Something in the way he says that ticks Rey, a word, _liar,_ pressing into the back of her skull. Maybe because his answer was so swift, like he’d rehearsed it in his mind so many times that it didn’t take time to form as earnest thoughts would. 

“What did you do, then? To be sentenced here?” Does she even want to know? No, but yes… wouldn’t it be best to know what kind of man this Ben is? A man who lied about his thoughts, was forthright with the way of this place, but what else?

This time he seems hesitant to answer, but he does it anyway. He tucks himself into his cot, not tired in posture at all. With his back to her, she can barely hear his reply, though it sends hollow pangs down her arms.

“I killed my father.”


End file.
